002- Uber Eats? More Like UU Eats.

A deeper conversation later... Right now that was the last thing that Nero wanted, and his stubborn-headedness meant he couldn't envision a future moment where that didn't still apply. This game was an escape for him, not a therapy session - he was dodging those in the real world on purpose thank you very much. This whole tutorial quest so far had been so uncomfortable for him in so many ways that he couldn't imagine voluntarily exposing himself to this sort of emotion and vulnerability again, especially in front of the same person whose opinion of him must already be so low. He could pretend this was a fluke, an anomaly, or even that her memory was wrong and she was confusing him with someone else if he did ever see her again. He could hardly do that if he ended up crying over a wall in front of her again, could he?

But maybe this girl needed it, that 'deeper conversation'. And while he had no intention of following through with her suggestion, he couldn't quite bring himself to turn her down to her face. "Yeah, maybe," he mumbled back to her in a voice that didn't exactly scream confidence. He didn't meet her eyes either, all signs of a blatant lie that he didn't quite have the self-awareness to notice himself. Still, it felt like a good enough compromise, especially since for now Laguna seemed to want to move on from all of this as well. Planning anything for the future could just wait.

Her strange ice Pokemon was returned, and suddenly they were heading off to the next obstacle - a fire escape staircase on the other side of the structure they'd just risen up to the top of. A staircase. That was nothing, he could do that... right? He was pretty sure there'd been stairs to the lab, or maybe someone near the Mom's House quest, so sure, stairs were nothing... And yet he couldn't help but think back to the list of athletic feats that Laguna had listed to him when he'd first hesitated at the bottom of the wall, all the incredible things she'd done so easily when he couldn't even try and drag himself up to a ledge on his own...

And then she fell.

If Little Miss I Can Do Anything couldn't even manage the stairs, how the fuck was he supposed to do it himself?

Thankfully though, something kicked in automatically before that thought could fully take form, Nero rushing forwards on instinct in an attempt to catch her as she stumbled without thinking about anything else. He missed, or was too slow at least, hands landing on her shoulders as her own hands gripped the bars of the railing to her side. He skidded to a halt behind her, feet automatically moving down the stairs to get him to the right position - because she was right, it was possible to do these sorts of things when you didn't overthink it. Nero had experienced that several times today already. "You alright?" he asked as he lifted his hands away, hovering them beside her instead because it felt rude to be touching her but wrong to move away entirely.

His gaze jumped to her package that had rolled away a little, stepping over to grab it and bring it closer because that felt like a slightly less invasive way to help her right now. "You err, want me to carry it?" he offered as he placed it down on top of his own that had been dropped by her side as he'd reached for her... only for his own package's vibrations to suddenly increase in ferocity, throwing the second one off the top of it. "Or... try to at least."

Laguna